A MYSTERY PERSON HAS ARRIVED- I absolutely f*cking hate this camera shot where the cameraman/woman has inexplicably chosen to shoot this person’s ankles instead of his face like normal. It’s SOOOO dumb.

RECAP OF LAST WEEK’S SHOW- I really don’t like these odd camera angles. Especially the ones that are from behind the fans with the fans in the way, like the cameraperson was inexplicably placed in the second row. Also, what’s up with these camera angles that have other camera operators’ backs in them? If this other camera clearly has a better shot then why are you using the shot from this camera?
Other than that, I didn’t really find this to be informative. I understood all of the results, but felt like I had no scope of why they mattered. Obviously I am a new viewer to the show and that is a large part of the problem, but on the other hand, the reason I am tuning in tonight for the first time in over a year is because I have decided to give this new booking regime a chance, and I’m certain that I’m not the only one, and they should have known than and been prepared for it.

MATT SYDAL PROMO- The good news is that the TNA Stupid Rules Championship no longer has stupid rules, meaning that it is just the TNA Goofy Name Championship. This change occurred because apparently the champion can make up whatever rules he wants and Sydal’s “spiritual guide” told him to change the rules back to normal. Quite frankly, TNA got lucky here because this is Matt Sydal we’re talking about so his “spiritual guide” might not be a person so much as a bar of soap in his bathroom that he thought was talking to him while he was high. They’re lucky the new rules aren’t something like pinfalls now require both of your opponent’s nipples to be touching the mat instead of his shoulder blades.
As I’m sure you can tell, I really would have preferred it for an authority figure to come out and make this change rather than Sydal being allowed to do it just because he wants to. On the bright side, Sydal had much more personality here than he did in his entire recent ROH/New Japan run

TNA IMPACT GRAND CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH: Matt Sydal(c) vs. Fallah Bahh- 6.5/10
Fallah Bahh is a horrendous stereotype of a sumo wrestler, including communicating only through grunts and similar noises. The fans are supporting him by chanting “FAT IS COOL!” I’m already regretting my decision to give TNA another chance.
The match was good and they did a very good job of telling their story of big, slow, fat monster vs. fast little guy, but there was such a cartoonish aspect to it that it turned me off.

CHRIS ADONIS & ELI DRAKE SHOW UP TO THE BUILDING- So why didn’t the cameraperson shoot their ankles and legs like he/she did with that first person to show up? And why are these guys allowed to show up to work late. I absolutely despise this type of shot as a hook. I knew these guys were going to be here because the announcers have been plugging their segment all night. Them showing up insn’t surprising in any way. Instead of giving a boring shot of two dudes walking that also raises kayfabe questions, why not just put up a graphic? Or even better, why not give me an extra ten seconds of wrestling somewhere when you need to cut to a break in the middle of a match?

TREVOR LEE & CALEB KONLEY BACKSTAGE- didn’t like it.
Trevor Lee can pull off the Hawaiian shirt look. Caleb Konley cannot. Ditto for a having a beard. Their shirts were too bright for the camera and they were oddly close to it. The short of this is that Trevor Lee has some sort of plan. Caleb Konley looks like such a dork here as opposed to when he was hanging out with Tony Nese and SoCal Val in the Premier Athlete Brand in EVOLVE.

Borash flat-out asks “who arrived earlier tonight, and will he show up here?” Dude. If this were real, there is absolutely no way that the identity of this person would not have made it around the locker room and out to the announcers by now. None. Even if this was something the company was deliberately trying to keep quiet (which would also explain why the cameraperson was instructed to not shoot his face) then this would still be a silly question because they would want there to be no doubt in your mind that this mystery person would show up on screen so the second question wouldn’t have been asked, and they would be hyping it up by telling everyone that they have a major surprise tonight rather than the way Borash is playing it up, which is that no one knows who this person is why they might be here.

KM vs. BOBBY LASHLEY- 5.75/10
The little bit they did to explain why this match was happening was much more along the lines of what I’d like to see rather than the action montage in the beginning. If you want an action montage in the beginning, do it while your theme song is playing instead of that goofy video of where they tell us what channel to watch the show on all over the world (if I’m watching your opening video then I already know what f*cking channel you’re on.
I think Josh and JB said “Walking Armageddon” about as often as someone was referred to as a “trailblazer” during the women’s Royal Rumble. The match was a decent heavyweight bout but wasn’t particularly exciting.

JIMMY JACOBS & KONGO KONG INTERRUPT JOSEPH PARK TALKING TO HIS GRANDMA JENNY ABOUT HIS COUSIN CHANDLER’S CONDITION- bad.
Jimmy wants Abyss to come out to fight Kongo Kong instead of Joseph. Joseph says Abyss is never coming back but Jimmy insists that “I’m a princess. I always get what I want.” I hate Kongo Kong and I was sick and tired of Joseph Park years ago. I love Jimmy Jacobs not even he could make this tolerable. I would much prefer for this to be crazy Jimmy Jacobs vs. Abyss than Kongo Kong vs. either Joseph or Abyss.

TNA is running a show as part of WrestleCon at WrestleMania weekend this year. This might come off as me hating on TNA just to hate on them, but I think then piggybacking on WrestleMania makes them look bad. ROH can get away with because they’ve been doing it since before they were anywhere near the size they are now as the #2 company in the USA and Canada, but for TNA, which had been the #2 for years, to be forced to do the thing that indy companies do, makes them look bad because it calls attention to how far they have fallen. I think it looks even worse than they’re doing so under the WreestleCon banner than under their own, as a major company should be able to run their own events. And, quite frankly, I think they’re setting themselves up to look even worse by comparison because they’re basically setting themselves up to be outdrawn by ROH, NXT, and the WWE Hall of Fame (definitely), PROGRESS (almost certainly), and based on past years, possibly RevPro and EVOLVE as well. The best things for them to do that weekend would be to do what CHIKARA did last year and run a show in the UK.
Also, they need to get rid of that G-d awful jazz they had playing during this commercial. I don’t care if the show is in New Orleans; f*cking elevator music doesn’t make the show feel like something I should be excited for!

Um… what the f*ck just happened? Some other channel called “Pluto TV” took over my TV for a moment and all of a sudden I was watching Abyss trying to drown Christian Cage in his own pool from the spring of 2006. Those were the days. When TNA was, like, actually pretty good.

LASHLEY PROMO- he’s going to continue doing both wresting and MMA. Then he bumped into Eddie Edwards backstage.

LAUREL VAN NESS vs. KIERA HOGAN- 1.25/10
Kiera Hogan is the first A.R. Fox trainee I’ve seen who has managed to get through an entire match without doing a single flip. Laurel took most of the match before Allie came out to distract her, allowing Hogan to get the roll-up victory. If they were going to have her get a pin on the champ- even a tainted one- I would have liked to see this match look a little more even, just so I can take her more seriously when the resultant title match comes around.

AN INTERVIEWER INTERVIEWS EC III & ALBERTO EL PATRON- GREAT!
Alberto in particular was excellent with his heel egotism. Shockingly, these two didn’t get along. The only thing I didn’t like here was the way Ethan stood while Alberto was talking, like he was a model posing for a photo, trying to show off his face and muscles while staring thoughtfully into the distance. It’s something he does all the time and it really bugs me. It looks like he’s completely unaware of what is going on around him, except when he occasionally gives his head an exaggerated nod of agreement.

LAX & OVE SEGMENT- some good, some bad, overall meh.
They need to get rid of that opening part of LAX’s entrance where it feels like they’re ripping off SAnitY. Just start with the gunshots like they used it. Also, starting off with something like that is a lot more conducive to setting up that big pop than those silly helicopter noises and bullhorn announcements. I do like the way they splice the entrance video into the live video, though.
Konan started this off by assuring everyone that they were still “serious like a late period,” which gave me that special combination of laughter and shock at the metaphor I had just heard. He also called LAX “the blue pill of professional wrestling” and referred to OVE as “the ovaries,” so we know where Konan’s mind is right now.
Konan cut a great promo on Sami Callihan. OVE came out to respond. “Ohio Versus Everything” is an ATROCIOUS name for a stable. Swami said that they still hate LAX but they respect them now and so they want a truce because otherwise one of them will die. Right after saying that he wants a truce, Sami then insisted that they would take LAX’s tag titles and then “take over everything.” Then he shouted “EVERYTHING!” a few times and they headed up the ramp. This has got to be one of the single worst promos Sami Callihan has cut in the past decade.
Konan followed them up the ramp and cut another promo on them. Konan was f*cking AWESOME here. While this was happening, Trevor Lee & Caleb Konley came out of the crowd and attacked LAX from behind with weapons and beat them up. The beating was good, but Lee & Konley looked like total goofs in a segment full of guys who came off as fighters. They need to ditch this Hawaiian shirt and short shorts crap right way. And Konley needs to lose the headband and the beard, too. Also, if their thing is that they’re from North Carolina, why are they wearing Hawaiian shirts? Konley looks like he’s a middle-aged man on vacation trying to relive his days as a surfer in college.
Also, they stole the Puerto Rican flag but not the Mexican one. On that note, it’s nice to see that Konan is now accepting Puerto Ricans into his group, considering that they once beat up Willie Urbina simply for being a Puerto Rican.

THE SAME INTERVIEWER INTERVIEWS JOHNNY IMPACT & MOOSE- excellent! Especially Johnny. To contrast with the heels, these two were 100% on the same page.

F*ck. I fell into another time-hole again and now I’m watching 2016 TNA. YUCK!
They showed almost two full minutes of a random brawl between EC III and Drew Galloway for no discernable reason.

ELI DRAKE & CHRIS ADONIS BACKSTAGE- they tease that the mystery person is someone Adonis brought in for his celebration of Eli. This was good.

A WEIRD F*CKING VIDEO PLAYED- I would never have figured out who this was for if I hadn’t heard Don Callis mention that this person was coming in early today on Killing The Town. Hell… even with having heard that it still took me until a good minute or so of racking my brain after it ended to figure out who it was for. If I didn’t know who this was, I would have found it weird rather than being some sort of intriguing mystery.

Borash now knows who the mystery man is and tells us not to turn that dial (my phrasing, not his, but he did implore us to stay tuned) because the mystery man is coming and we won’t believe who it is. The way he plugged this felt like something from a crappy studio wrestling show rather than a modern professional wrestling show and made it feel lame.
Then, in his next sentence he said he as “hearing a lot of rumors” about who it was, which made it sound like he actually didn’t know even though he just said he did know who it was five seconds ago.

ETHAN CARTER III & ALBERTO EL PATRON vs. MOOSE & JOHNNY IMPACT- 7/10
I love Moose’s music so f*cking much. Once this big “All-Star Tag Team Main Event” started… the announcers began to talk about every other angle on the show instead of talking about this match. Now, to their credit, part of the reason this jumped out at me was because it was the first time they had randomly started plugging other angles during a match all show (or at least the first time that I noticed it), but that still doesn’t make any better that they started to do so here.
These guys had a great tag match. The heels managed to work together but in a way that made it feel like they worked together despite their egos rather than working together seamlessly and having the earlier segment feel like it was a pointless swerve. The babyfaces won when Moose pinned Alberto.

How has no one before me right now thought of giving Moose a move he could call the “Moose-plex?”

CHRIS ADONIS PRESENTS “THE FACTS OF ELI DRAKE’S LIFE”- GREAT SEGMENT
I actually laughed at Josh & JB talking over the short video packages that Adonis put together for Eli. That was really funny. Once they said “the greatest X that ever lived” I figured out where this was going. The switch with the videos (I assume was done by the guy who I’m sure is about to come out) was fun, and these two trying to turn it into a positive was even funnier.
So… yeah. Austin Aries showed up. Just about the only negative of this segment was the pathetically small pop that Aries got. He cut a great promo saying that if Eli Drake wants to call himself “the greatest champion that ever lived” he has to go through Aries first. Drake cut a good promo turning down the match. Aries call him a coward in a colorful manner… and then Adonis nailed Aries from behind with the title and laid him out. Drake then called for a referee and we had a…

TNA WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Eli Drake(c) (w/Chris Adonis) vs. Austin Aries- no rating, bad segment.
Aries kicked out of Eli’s pin, then hit a few moves and won the title. I thought this made Eli look really bad, and all for the sake of a big attention-getting “Lex Luger shows up on Nitro” moment. The problem is that they already had their Lex Luger moment for the first show under the new regime: Aries returning to the company. What they needed now was a real hook for next week’s show, and, to follow the Luger paradigm, that should have been Aries’ title shot. Then you can let them go out there and have a real main event and everyone can know about the match in advance so that even fans who didn’t tune in next week can tune in this week to see Aries’ return can tune in next week and see the title match.
And, quite frankly, one thing TNA really does need to do is prove to me that they can have a main event world title match that gets enough time to really deliver and has a clean finish. I was happy that we got almost all clean finishes on this show and the only non-clean finish they did was a clear way to advance a story rather than just overbooking for its own sake and the logical follow-up has already been announced… but I’ve been down this road with TNA so many times before that they’re going to have to convince me that they’re going to be able to deliver on a consistent basis.

On the whole, I liked this show. It was mostly fun to watch and the wrestling was decent and many of the characters (well… really mostly the men’s heavyweight division) are good, but I really would like there to be some sort of kayfabe authority figure or decision-making body (even if it’s one that exists entirely off-screen) so that it doesn’t feel like the inmates are running the asylum. I was also surprised at the lack of X-Division. It’s freakin’ TNA. How do you not showcase the X-Division? If I was booking this I would have just unified the Stupid Rules Title with the X-Division Title rather than randomly changing the rules of the Stupid Rules Title. I mean… it’s Matt Sydal. Who else on this roster would make a better X-Division Champion than him?
So… for the big question: will I tune in next week?
Yes. I’ll probably give them a few weeks after that as well. But between WWE, NJPW, RevPro, wXw, the Gabe promotions, PWG, and probably some PROGRESS and NOAH as well, not to mention the large library of unwatched wrestling DVDs I have lying around, my wrestling schedule is pretty full, so if I’m going to keep watching Impact, I need them to do more than just not be the old TNA anymore. I need the show to actually be something I want to go out of my way to watch the way EVOLVE or wXw or NXT is.

Borash’s voice comes off as someone trying to play sports announcer rather than someone who actually is an announcer.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. While discussing Sydal changing the rules, Josh Matthews said “if wrestlers weren’t wrestlers they’d be politicians.” I have no idea why he said this or what it connects to.

2. Josh Matthews- “Both KM and the referee are out of their minds if they think Bobby Lashley’s going to submit to a side headlock.”
Way to bury the hold, moron.
Look… we all know that Lashley isn’t tapping out to a f*cking headlock just like we know that no one is going to tap out to a f*cking arm wringer or a short arm scissors. And we all know that, in 99% of cases, a wrestler isn’t going to tap out to a hold that isn’t the other’ finisher, and of that remaining 1% of cases, you can usually get a good feeling that a guy tapping out to something that isn’t someone’s finisher is possible well before it actually does happen (that’s called good selling and good storytelling). But as an announcer, you can’t rub that fact in our faces because it makes it that much harder for us to suspend our disbelief and start to think that maybe it might happen.

3. Josh said he was impressed by how many suggestions he has gotten from fans on Twitter about who the mystery man might be.
This is a taped show, so if I go to his Twitter I’m pretty sure I won’t see any of that, which just Josh up to damage his own credibility of anyone does check, so why would you plug this angle in that way?

It is, though. Whether they want it to be or not and whether it's fair or not. They're forever glued to the TNA stink until they do enough to convince people they won't return to form, and that will take a lot of time.

It is, though. Whether they want it to be or not and whether it's fair or not. They're forever glued to the TNA stink until they do enough to convince people they won't return to form, and that will take a lot of time.

Dixie is gone, Russo is gone. Borash is gone, Gaburick is gone, the six sided ring is gone. Panda energy is gone. time to let it go man, you're coming in with your mind made up that you'll hate it

It is, though. Whether they want it to be or not and whether it's fair or not. They're forever glued to the TNA stink until they do enough to convince people they won't return to form, and that will take a lot of time.

Dixie is gone, Russo is gone. Borash is gone, Gaburick is gone, the six sided ring is gone. Panda energy is gone. time to let it go man, you're coming in with your mind made up that you'll hate it

Which is exactly what everyone said before Bischoff came in and before Gaburick came in and before Prichard came in, and before Jarrett/Mantell/D'Amore came back in. The fact that I'm watching it is enough of a leap of faith, but I don't totally trust D'Amore and Callis. I'm not fixing to hate the show. I'm just setting expectations so that I don't get dragged into thinking "they'e just a few weeks away from things getting better" for months and month and years and years before realizing (again) that they won't.